Alienware M14X - Not happy with performance - How to improve?

kanej2007

My main gaming rig is my pc in which you can see the specs of it to the left.

Problem is I cannot carry it with me from place to place and therefore decided to get a laptop to use when I'm not able to use my pc.

I bought the Alienware M14X.

Even though it has an i7 2.4GHz, turbo mode of 3.5GHz, 6Gb 1600Mhz ram & a 3Gb Nvidia Geforce GT 555M GPU I'm not at all happy with it's performance.

In the nvidia control panel I've disabled all antialiasing and set everything to performance & not image quality, disabled triple buffering & vsync.

On top of that I've used MSI Afterburner and overclocked from 590/900/1180 to 750/1150/1500 and it's made very minimal difference, around 5-6fps max.

F.E.A.R is quite an old game and when maxed out I'm getting an average of 50-55fps, wtf?

GTA IV with enb series is completely unplayable giving me under 5fps. My younger brother has a GTX 560 which isn't much better than a GT 555 & he gets 60fps constant in GTA IV.

Why am I getting such poor performance? I've tried both stock drivers & the latest 301.27 driver and I've not had any improvement in fps.

Based on the above is there ANYTHING I can do to improve my frame rate? I'd be happy getting an extra 10-15fps.

I'd like to get the most out the laptop & any advice or tips would be appreciated.

Thanks gurus

kanej2007 · 05-14-2012, 10:44 | posts: 5,701 | Location: Dubai, UAE / London, UK

After playing Half-Life 2 for some time it microstutters even though it runs at 60fps.

My ancient laptop had far better fps than my Alienware and it had a 512mb 8800 GTX.

Foamy4 · 05-14-2012, 13:47 | posts: 453 | Location: Denmark

Something's odd about your fps in GTA 4. Could it be a problem with the optimus not switching? Have you monitored your GPU usage, temperatures and stuff like that in games?

kanej2007 · 05-14-2012, 13:56 | posts: 5,701 | Location: Dubai, UAE / London, UK

Quote:

Originally Posted by Foamy4

Something's odd about your fps in GTA 4. Could it be a problem with the optimus not switching? Have you monitored your GPU usage, temperatures and stuff like that in games?

Possibly. I've monitored gpu usage but not with GTA IV.

Idle temps are usually between 44-50 and load temps go no more than 64.

I will recheck & monitor gpu usage with GTA IV.

Foamy4 · 05-14-2012, 14:20 | posts: 453 | Location: Denmark

Further research revealed this:
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-.../19394660.aspx

Seems like there was a problem with the optimus on his M14x using the same GPU.

nhlkoho · 05-14-2012, 15:04 | posts: 3,870 | Location: Washington DC

Something is wrong. I have a GT540 in my laptop and I get well over 100fps when playing FEAR. Maybe try restoring it to factory default settings and see how it performs.

That card is quite a bit slower than the discrete GTX560. It should be more on par with the 8800GTX.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ew,3107-7.html

kanej2007 · 05-15-2012, 06:07 | posts: 5,701 | Location: Dubai, UAE / London, UK

Quote:

Originally Posted by nhlkoho

Something is wrong. I have a GT540 in my laptop and I get well over 100fps when playing FEAR. Maybe try restoring it to factory default settings and see how it performs.

That card is quite a bit slower than the discrete GTX560. It should be more on par with the 8800GTX.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ew,3107-7.html

I'm trying a third driver only Dell's site is not working and my Alienware M14X is not even listed in Alienware's website!

Currently I'm using a custom driver with a custom inf.

As of now I'm trying to find the latest working driver for my laptop.

Will report back when I get news.

scatman839 · 05-15-2012, 11:19 | posts: 8,742 | Location: Dundee, Scotland

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/noteb...driver-uk.html

That would be the latest working one.

kanej2007 · 05-15-2012, 19:35 | posts: 5,701 | Location: Dubai, UAE / London, UK

Quote:

Originally Posted by scatman839

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/noteb...driver-uk.html

That would be the latest working one.

Many thanks for the link scatman.

Currently I've got the 296.10 forceware driver.

I'll try the latest above driver you sent the link for & will update you with how it performs later on.

scatman839 · 05-15-2012, 21:47 | posts: 8,742 | Location: Dundee, Scotland

Also, are you sure turbo boost is on in the bios and enabled in windows? That could explain the low fps.

scoutingwraith · 05-16-2012, 02:42 | posts: 9,228 | Location: Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha

Yeah something is not right. Even with my M11x i get higher FPS than you do. Change the drivers that the others provided.

kanej2007 · *Last edited by kanej2007; 05-16-2012 at 10:02.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by scatman839

Also, are you sure turbo boost is on in the bios and enabled in windows? That could explain the low fps.

Turbo boost is definately on since I've got the turbo boot monitor & I've seen it reach upto 3.5Ghz.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scoutingwraith

Yeah something is not right. Even with my M11x i get higher FPS than you do. Change the drivers that the others provided.

Here are some results from the new 301.24 drivers that scatman kindly provided:

Battlefield 2 - Fully maxed, 16XAF, FXAA on, Antialiasing 16xQ CSAA, 8x Supersample, I get 75fps on stock.

When the gpu is overclocked I get 87fps.

FEAR fully maxed gets around 85fps on stock and 108 overclocked.

Half-Life 2 gets 105fps on stock and 118fps overclocked.

Based on the above it seems the laptop performs decent in some games whereas poorly or just about average in others.

I'm surprised it struggled with Fear which was released back in 2005 yet it got over 100fps in Half-Life 2.

I tried both Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 however the fps reading was all over the place, between 40-120fps, every few seconds it would randomly decrease & increase...

The GT 555 isn't a bad overclocker though, here are 2 screenshots taken from the benchmark test in Fear, the first was taken using stock GPU settings & the second screen was heavily overclocked.

Based on performance it's very similar to a 512mb 8800GT, nothing special but for a 14'' lappie it's not something to grumble about...

Temperatures never went any more than 72 celcius...

The third screenshot is my overclocked gpu.

scatman839 · 05-16-2012, 12:12 | posts: 8,742 | Location: Dundee, Scotland

that seems more right, but I can't compare because I don't have any of those games on hand, and they're old.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.41933.0.html

that should be what to expect

kanej2007 · 05-16-2012, 12:52 | posts: 5,701 | Location: Dubai, UAE / London, UK

Quote:

Originally Posted by scatman839

that seems more right, but I can't compare because I don't have any of those games on hand, and they're old.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.41933.0.html

that should be what to expect

Yeah your right. I checked the link and it's about average.

It will happily play older titles from 2007 or older on high settings with 60 or more fps.

However it struggles with newer titles giving you around 30 or less fps...

I'm not too bothered since the laptop is used 90% of the time for Skype, internet, etc...

You cannot compare a desktop gaming machine to a 14 incher...

Thanks for your help and advice.